Playin' Back in Stereo
by Rahmi
Summary: Drake realizes something that causes him to have a no good, very bad, wished he'd never fallen out of bed bad day. Lucky for him, someone else is in the same boat.


_I'm not sure where the idea for this came from, but. Here it is anyway. The story has mentions of both Derek/Casey and Drake/Josh, along with some awkward Drake/Casey. If those pairings make you uncomfortable, you should probably give this a miss. Other than the pairings (and what they imply), there are no warnings._

* * *

Drake is having a bad day. A no good, very bad, wished he'd never fallen out of bed bad day. Not only that, the Premiere is full because of some stupid talent night thing he's not allowed to participate in because he almost failed gym (again), which really, really sucks.

He needs to mope. And see Josh at the same time. He scans the group of mostly girls staring dreamily at the stage and squashes the urge to pout. That should be him up there, getting the stares. Stupid gym.

There's a girl sitting at one of the tables near the snack bar. She's wearing one of those off the shoulder shirts he usually loves and jean shorts and flip flops. More importantly, she's all by herself, so it's not like he'd be, like, making a bunch of people move or anything, so he saunters over that way. If nothing else, she could share, right?

"You're in my spot," he says. Okay, so not much with the sharing. He doesn't feel like sharing tonight. Sure, she's a really, really hot girl, but this is _his spot_ and it's the best spot from which to Josh Watch, so he can offer to make out with her later to make up for it or something.

The girl flicks a look at him and huffs. "I got here first."

She's really pretty, Drake notes again. Then he realizes what she's said and he pouts at her. Not that many girls tell him no. "It's still my spot."

"I'm having sort of a bad day, okay?" the girl says. She wipes once at her eyes and her make-up smears the tiniest bit and Drake recoils a little, because crying chicks? Not cool. "I just need to sit here."

And while usually he'd, like, run from crying girls, the only other free table is over in the weird corner that smells like nerds, and, no. "No, no, see, I am having the king of bad days," Drake tells her seriously.

"Mine's worse." She raises her eyebrows and purses her lips.

That's a dare, right? He thinks that's a dare. And nobody's day is worse than his is.

"I," he says, "Have just realized that I might want to make out with my brother. A lot. I _so _deserve to sit here."

He's half expecting the girl to jump up out of the chair and run screaming the other direction. That's sort of what Megan did when he told her. Now that he thinks about it, he's not really sure _why_ he told Megan anyway, but he's hoping it was a good idea. Except that most of his bad ideas seem like good ideas at the time.

Whatever.

The girl gets this weird glint in her eye as she leans forward. "Step, half, or full?" she asks urgently.

"Uh...?" Girls were weird. Nice to make out with. But weird. Also, not Josh, which is sort of the problem he's having right now, and that just gets him thinking about making out with Josh, and what the hell, brain? Stupid brain.

"Hey, guy with tight pants." The girl leans forward and flicks him in the cheek with one hand. Drake looks down at himself for a second, then looks back up at her, frowning. His pants are totally not that tight tonight. He has wiggle room! "What kind of brother?"

"Um, my stepbrother," Drake tells her seriously.

She laughs a little. "What are the odds?" she says, and Drake really hopes she's not actually asking him, because he sucks at math. She abruptly turns to point one finger at the band on right now. "See that guy?" she asks.

Drake squints at the band. They're not that bad, out of tune, maybe, and they need a better singer than the guy screaming into the mike, but he's been ignoring them in favor of his personal meltdown.

"The dude in the middle?" he asks, just to make sure, and the girl nods.

Yeah, the guy with the really shaggy hair, in the leather jacket, who's holding his guitar sort of wrong. As soon as he realizes that, his fingers are itching to fix it, to show him how to do it _right_, because Drake may not be smart or whatever like Josh was, but he knew music. And the dude was holding his guitar wrong.

"What about him?"

"I've been in love with him since we were sixteen," the girl says. She reaches across herself to grab her arm just above the elbow and bites her lip.

"So?" He so doesn't see how this trumps his brother card thing. She's in love with some guy who can't hold his instrument right. Big deal. He wants to hold his brother down and play tonsil hockey with him.

The girl ducks her head a little. "My mom married his dad when we were fifteen," she says. "We're on a trip to the States to see our aunt."

Oh.

Drake sits there for a few seconds. The girl fiddles with her hands and spins her cell phone around and around on the table. She keeps looking at him every few seconds, like she's expecting him to do something, which is just making him really, really nervous.

Behind him, Josh's voice rises as he yells at Crazy Steve. "That's my brother," Drake says stupidly.

The girl looks up and raises both her eyebrows again. She's wearing blue eye shadow with little sparkles in it. "Which one?"

"Over there." Drake tosses a hand over his shoulder, so used to just knowing where Josh is that he could cry about it. "With the curly hair and the shouting."

"He's cute," the girl says. "I guess."

"Yeah, yours too." They sit there awkwardly. Drake thinks they should, like, dub it the private meeting of the Perverts Anonymous or something, because how weird is it that he meets someone with the _exact same _problem as him? Really, really weird.

Drake hums a little under his breath to try to drown out the band still on stage. The girl seems to be humming along with the band, which sort of takes her down in his opinion, 'cause the band's lyrics consist entirely of "she said it was over, but it was not over," over and over and over again.

He has better lyrics than that and he's _stupid_.

"Wanna make out?" Drake finally asks helplessly. He's not very good at this talking thing.

The girl's eyes snap back to him. "What?" she shrieks.

The guy on the stage looks their way. Even from back here, Drake can see him narrow his eyes at him; he sort of shrugs back in the guy's direction and looks at the girl again. "You're sad, right? Making out always makes me feel better."

"Well, it makes me feel worse."

"Oh."

Drake darts his eyes to the side and starts to sing under his breath. They really are sort of bad.

"Hey, I know that song!" The girl says. She smiles a little at him, tilting her head, and Drake grins back so hard his face hurts. "It was on that commercial for the football thing Derek made us all watch."

She hums back a few bars for him. She, unlike that guy up there, has a decent voice, Drake decides. "Save the rainy days for another time," he tries, hoping, and he feels like a rock star when she smiles.

"Read between the lines," she half-sings back to him, grinning, "I'm so glad that you're mine."

"I wrote that!" he tells her excitedly. "And sang it!"

The girl claps her hands. "Really?"

Drake nods seriously, still feeling like a million bucks. His first fan that doesn't know him personally. This is awesome.

"I'm Casey," the girl says after a few seconds. Her face falls a little and she waves her hand at the stage where her stepbrother dude is still mangling some song. "That idiot up there is Derek."

He figures that means the song love is over. Damn it. "Drake." Drake tilts his head over the back of his chair towards where he can hear Josh muttering to himself and says, "Josh."

"Let the Incest R Us meeting commence," Casey mutters down into her soda.

Drake grins at her. He doesn't really know what commence means, but he knows she just made a joke about them. "I was gonna call it Perverts Anonymous," he confides.

"Oh, God," Casey says. She holds a hand over her eyes and smiles. "You are the weirdest boy I've ever met."

"That's because I'm not a smart boy," Drake tells her.

"No, I've met stupid boys before," Casey says. She points at the stage again, and Drake watches the boy with the fluffy hair (Derek? Maybe?) scowl and mouth "what?" at them. "Derek's lazy and mean and idiotic. You're kind of... sweet? And don't call yourself stupid. That's a self-fulfilling prophecy."

"That's because you don't know me, and you're a chick." Drake points behind him without looking and hears Josh squawk a question towards him for it. "Josh says I'm totally in-something and forgetful and manipulative. Like a less evil Megan."

"Inconsiderate?" Casey asks.

Drake nods. He thinks that might have been the word. "I guess. I don't know. I forgot his birthday a couple times. And I got him grounded. And I made him have to retake a test because I made him late. He was really mad about that last one."

Casey's laughing at him. Or, well, he thinks she is, anyway. She's not laughing like Megan usually does or Mindy when he's said something that only makes sense in his head. It's more like how Josh laughs when he's totally self-conscious about something.

He thinks it's cute and perks up, because he's supposed to think girls laughing are cute. And then he wilts against the table again because, really, he only thinks she's cute because it reminds him of Josh. Stupid Josh.

"What's so funny?" He watches the guy on stage again, because he's starting to kind of look like he wants to walk over and punch Drake in the face. He prefers it when guys don't do that to him.

"You're Derek!" Casey says through her laughter.

He doesn't get it. "No, I'm Drake." He points to himself for emphasis, because maybe this Casey is a lot like him. Maybe she's not a smart girl either.

"No, I mean, Derek's done all those things to me!" Casey smiles at him. "He once switched our test papers and he got me grounded a bunch of times and he's an absolute pig about girls. You're Derek!"

Drake knows being called a pig is generally not a good idea. "Okay?" he says anyway. He stops for a second, then says hesitantly, "Does that make you Josh?"

Casey nods her head. Drake watches the long strands of her brown hair slide across her arms and tries to really, really want to make out with her. Instead, he really, really wants to turn his head to see what Josh is doing. He figures that's a bad thing.

"This is stupid," he tells Casey. "You're really hot and I don't want to kiss you. I want to, like, go jump Josh. I suck."

"Yeah," Casey says back moodily. She's not laughing or smiling anymore. "Tell me about it."

Drake nods a little. "Wanna do it anyway?" Oh, wait, hadn't she said something about making out making her feel worse? Girls were weird.

But this time, she smiles a little bit (she's got a cute smile, he notices).

"You know what? I think I do. I mean, it's not like it's gonna make Derek jealous or anything," yeah, Drake thinks she might not be very smart either, because even _he_ can see that the dude onstage is watching her like a jealous hawk or something, "But I think I want to kiss someone who knows what I'm going through."

She scoots forward.

Drake's not into being punched, which he thinks is what's gonna happen if he kisses Casey. But she's sort of hot and Josh is sort of completely out of his league, and, also, would think he was a giant pervert or something.

It really would be nice to kiss a girl who wouldn't freak over him imagining her as his stepbrother.

He tilts his head and touches his lips to hers. She makes a startled noise in the back of her throat, like she wasn't really expecting him to do it, and he thinks _whoops_ somewhere in the back of his skull. He's not used to getting mixed signals from girls! Most girls _like_ to kiss him.

Before he can pull back and run (he doesn't like being slapped anymore than he likes being punched), her lips soften against his mouth and he relaxes. Her mouth is glossy and slick, pink lip gloss if her remembers and it tastes like strawberry, which is sort of cliché, but, whatever.

He'd liked that one girl who wore the Dr. Pepper flavored lip gloss. He'd stayed with her for an extra two days just to make sure he could always have a Dr. Pepper fix if he needed it.

He realizes this isn't really working at about the same time he realizes he's thinking about putting Dr. Pepper lip gloss on Josh and licking it off again. Casey snickers a little into the kiss, which he's usually offended by, but his mouth curves into a smile against hers before he can help it.

They sort of suck at this. Really. Suck. He thinks his first kiss at _eight_ was better than this one.

Someone clears their throat from really close by.

Drake drags himself up from Casey, frowning. He's expecting Josh for some reason, because Josh knows he's technically dating that girl in the Red Shirt from school and his brother gets twitchy about things like that, even if the girls don't care.

He's not expecting Casey's stepbrother. Glaring. Like he wants to hit him.

"How is it that you always manage to find the dorkiest boy in the whole room and make eyes at him?" Derek asks as Casey self-consciously thumbs her smeared lip gloss back into place. "Just for the record? I do _not_ approve."

Drake takes offense at that. He's the coolest guy in the room. And Eric and Craig are totally over in the dork corner right now, doing the nerd make out thing where they like each other for their brains or something. Ick.

"Well, good!" Casey crosses her arms and leans against Drake's chest. Huh. Drake drapes one arm across her waist, mostly to keep her from falling out of her seat and shrugs a little at Josh, who's doing his goldfish impression ten feet away. "Because every guy _you_ like turns out to be a giant, girl-using jerk just like you."

Drake jumps a little guiltily and licks her sparkly strawberry lip gloss off his mouth.

"Guilty as charged," Derek says cheerfully. He leans over the both of them and rubs his sweaty head against Casey's bare shoulder.

"Der-_ek_!"

Drake's not the sharpest tool in the shed. He's not. But he knows he wouldn't do anything like that to the Creature, no matter how much he hates her, because it involves, _shudder,_ touching her. He's gotta wonder again about Casey not getting it.

Still, she's pretty nice and she obviously doesn't get Derek's way of doing the whole flirting thing. Drake should explain it to her, and that means getting rid of the stepbrother for a minute. He sits up a straighter and hauls Casey up with him.

"Dude," he tells Derek, "This is a private meeting of the Perverts Anonymous."

Derek rolls his eyes so hard that Drake is reminded of Megan at her evil, brother loathing worst. Scary. "Oh, and Casey is such a perv. She's too sweet, too wholesome, too _boring._ She collects pony stickers." He grins lopsidedly at Casey. "Right, Case?"

This guy's a little skeevy, Drake thinks, and then grins to himself because he actually knows what skeevy means. He was totally going to steal Josh's next Word of the Day calendar.

"It's for a specific kind of pervert, man," Drake says importantly. "The kind that totally wants to bone thei--" Casey makes a choking noise next to him and smacks him on the shoulder. Hard.

"Ow," he whines under his breath as he turns his head. He mouths "what?" at her. She makes a chopping motion across her throat with her hand, and, oh, yeah. Not supposed to tell this guy about the incest perverts. Got it.

"Whatever," Derek says. He rubs his hand through his hair. "I'm leaving now, so you're gonna have to find your own ride to the hotel. Unless you want to beg me." He cocks his head and waits for a second.

Casey slumps against him. Drake tightens the arm he's got around her waist. He leans forward to whisper, "I totally have a car," in Casey's ear.

Her back straitens and she forces the fakest smile he's ever seen at her stepbrother while she says, "It's cool. I've got a ride."

Drake thinks he'd be dead dead dead dead dead if looks could kill.

"Your brother has a crush on you," he tells Casey bluntly after Derek's grabbed his things and stormed off. "Like, a really, really big one. Romeo and Julio big."

"Juliet," Casey corrects absently. She pushes herself back into her own seat, which makes Drake glad, since she was kind of heavy and, also, she was interfering with his view of Josh. "And no he doesn't. He's always been like that. He made a giant charm bracelet out of all my laundry once."

"Did he use your underwear?" Drake asks curiously. When she nods, he quirks his mouth. "Then he's always had a thing for you. Trust me, guys don't do the sweat on you thing unless they really, really like you."

Drake pulls a face at Josh around Casey's shoulder while she thinks and Josh thrusts out his lower lip at him before disappearing around the corner. Damn. No more Josh watching for him.

"Really?" Casey asks hopefully. Her face does this scrunching thing as her shoulders go up. It's cute.

Drake grins at her and nods his head a couple of times. "Really. Sweating is like the ultimate sign a guy likes you." A motion out of the corner of his eye catches his attention and he spares it one long glance before he looks back at Casey. His brother really is weird sometimes.

Casey's shoulders drop as she smiles and tucks her hands under her chin.

They watch Josh watch them. His brother's trying to be sneaky about it, but Drake's usually right there next to Josh when he does stuff like this, and, also, he looks nothing like the usual guy who gibbers incoherently in the corner around this time of the night. Nothing like him.

"Your Josh is weird," Casey informs him dryly.

"Yeah, but at least he's not a jerk."

She nods her head. "Okay, point."

She waves to Josh, just a curl of her fingers, and Josh turns bright red and slinks off. "Really weird," Casey says. She looks embarrassed for some reason. "Am I that scary?"

"You're cute," he tells her bluntly. Also, he's starting to think she's one of those high-maintenance chicks he always tries to avoid. Fun. "And your Derek person thinks you're cute too, so it's gotta be true, right?"

Casey smiles again.

It's quiet. That band is gone and it's weird sitting here in a Perverts Anonymous meeting with nothing to say, so he scratches his head. "Would you guys have three-headed babies?" he blurts out after a few seconds.

"What? No!" Casey scrunches her eyebrows together and then smiles a bit. "That's only for people who are, like, really related. Not stepsibling related."

"So me and Josh could totally have normal kids?"

Casey looks at him for long enough that he starts to think he's said something wrong. Then her eyes go sort of soft the way Mom's do right before she sighs and pets his hair and tells him he looks just like his Dad did, and Casey mouth curls into a smile. "Yeah, you guys would have normal kids."

"Cool."

He runs his fingers absently through Casey's hair. It's soft and thicker than his own and it clings to the guitar calluses on his fingertips. "They'd be cute kids." He tugs on one of the butterfly clips in her hair.

Casey's head drops onto his shoulder as she sighs. "Yeah, they would."

Totally. They'd be pretty like him and have shiny hair like him and sing like him. Only they'd be smart and nice like Josh. Wait. "Boys can't have babies together," Drake informs Casey somewhat sadly. That's not fair.

"No, they can't."

Oh, she already knew. Maybe that's why she was smiling at him like that?

Drake shrugs and twirls her hair throw his fingers. At least she didn't call him dumb. It's not like he didn't know he wasn't smart. He just hated people pointing it out to him. People other than Josh. When Josh did it, it was alright.

"You like butterflies?" he asks her after a beat.

Casey touches the pink butterfly necklace she's got on. "What gave you that idea?"

"No reason." They've got a gumball machine somewhere that has little plastic butterfly clip on earrings. Megan likes to get them whenever she steals change from his pockets. "Want some more?"

She leans against his shoulder a little longer, then sighs. "Okay," she says, pushing away. He lets her hair trail through his hands while she stands up and turns to wiggle his fingers at Josh while she grabs her purse.

He sort of wants to invite Josh along with them. He tilts his head, thinking about it. Casey reaches over and pushes his bangs out of his eyes with a sigh, giving up on whatever she's doing for the moment. "I hate when Derek's hair does that too," she informs him, glancing back down at her stuff. "I want to see your eyes! Not your messy hair."

Josh is giving him a disapproving look (what else is new?) when he looks back up at him again, but Casey smiles at him when she's ready to go, so he just grabs her hand and goes looking for that machine. They need something to remember the first national meeting of the Perverts Anonymous club.

"Can I have your phone?" Casey asks while Drake's looking around and trying very, very hard to ignore his fuming stepbrother. He doesn't know what Josh's problem is.

He digs his phone out of his front pocket with his free hand and hands it over. There's the familiar beep of buttons, a girl programming her number into his phone, and then he spots the stupid machine, way over there in the nerd corner.

"There," Casey says, handing his phone back. He takes it and shoves it into one of his back pockets 'cause he needs more than one hand to pry something into his front ones. Okay, so maybe his jeans are a little tight. "Now you can call me if you need to talk or something. We can commiserate together!"

"Don't know what that means," Drake murmurs absently, zeroing in on the machine. He tugs Casey to make her hurry up, because there's some little pre-teen girl skipping over towards it and if Drake knows one thing, it's that little girls are scary evil. She's probably going to buy all the earrings.

"We can feel sorry for ourselves around other people," Casey says. Her fingers squeeze his. "Your brother's glaring at us."

"Yeah, he does that sometimes. Mostly when I'm being stupid." He doesn't think he's being stupid right now, but, again, he usually doesn't, even when it turns out he'd done something majorly dumb.

He cuts the girl off and grins over at Casey. "Taa-daa! Butterfly machine."

Casey laughs. Drake trades her phone for his quarters and quickly pushes his own number into it. She doesn't have nearly as many people in her call-list as he does, and most of them are labeled things like, "ICE - Mom" and "Lizzie's School."

"Earrings," Casey says. She holds them out for him. They're some kind of cheap metal and pink glittery shiny stuff, tiny butterflies hanging off the main part from silver chains. Drake opens his palm and lets her drop one of them into it.

He holds it up in front of his face, and, yeah, it looks even worse closer. Why did he think this would be a good idea?

"You don't have to wear it," she says when she sees his face. "Just keep it as a good luck charm or something. Maybe attach it to your phone? Commemorate Perverts Anonymous."

Drake doesn't know what commemorate means either. Casey seems to like big words that begin with the letter c. Or k. It could totally be a k. He closes his fist around the butterfly earring thing and thinks about it. He could hang it over his bed or something. Yeah.

Casey's already threading it through the strings hanging off her cell phone and tying a knot to keep it there. "There."

Drake grins and opens his hand so he can tap his earring against the one dangling from her phone.

"I hereby conclude this meeting of the Perverts Anonymous," Casey says solemnly.

Drake watches Josh freezes two feet behind Casey and wants to bang his head against the butterfly gumball machine thing. Instead, he smiles at Casey weakly and says, "Yeah, over. You need a ride back to your brother?"

They leave Josh gaping there in the corner of the Premiere. Drake really hopes he's not going to ask a million questions as soon as he gets home, but he's not holding his breath. This is, after all, a stupid no good bad day. Even if Casey was making it a little bit better.


End file.
